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| Format | Legality |
| 1v1 Commander | Legal |
| Archenemy | Legal |
| Arena | Legal |
| Block Constructed | Legal |
| Canadian Highlander | Legal |
| Casual | Legal |
| Commander / EDH | Legal |
| Commander: Rule 0 | Legal |
| Custom | Legal |
| Duel Commander | Legal |
| Gladiator | Legal |
| Highlander | Legal |
| Historic | Legal |
| Historic Brawl | Legal |
| Legacy | Legal |
| Leviathan | Legal |
| Limited | Legal |
| Modern | Legal |
| Modern Beyond Horizons | Legal |
| Oathbreaker | Legal |
| Pioneer | Legal |
| Planar Constructed | Legal |
| Planechase | Legal |
| Quest Magic | Legal |
| Tiny Leaders | Legal |
| Vanguard | Legal |
| Vintage | Legal |
Grafdigger's Cage
Artifact
Creature cards in graveyards or libraries can't enter the battlefield.
Players can't cast spells from graveyards or libraries.
DawnsRayofLight on
Miller? I hardly know 'er
2 months ago
Out
2 land (for Abstergo Entertainment and Hydroelectric Specimen Flip)
Confounding Conundrum: decent hate piece but very matchup dependent and easy to play around
Narset, Parter of Veils: while a good hate piece, it may not work well in this deck since you sort of want your opponents drawing to speed up your game plan but maybe also you don't want them drawing into interaction, I can see arguments for and against.
Curse of the Swine: It is also sort of an iffy card, like on paper it looks decent but I stopped running it after seeing it rarely made a difference in every deck I played it. I guess it can get rid of a couple of troublesome creatures so like Narset I am iffy on if dropping it is a good idea or not
Chrome Mox: This deck sort of feels a bit slower and I do not think this gives it any extra speed it needs, Mana Vault would be better
In
Abstergo Entertainment (graveyard hate and can get back something useful)
Lantern/Top deck manipulation pieces: maybe a suggested package
Grave hate
Soul-Guide Lantern / Tormod's Crypt / Ghost Vacuum / Grafdigger's Cage
Hate pieces
Wandering Archaic Flip (protection)
Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir (protection in your turn) Interaction
Hydroelectric Specimen Flip (protection)
other
Displacer Kitten: Blink Jace for repeated mill and The Ring for protection
Jace, Wielder of Mysteries: works with your game plan and lets you flip the script and traumatize yourself then +1 him and win.
shadowjules on
Budget Cycle Storm
3 months ago
Hey QuantumGeckoGuy! Very cool deck man, I tinkered with something like this for a while as well.
I tinkered with a similar concept for ages. Instead of looking to scale with Drannith Stinger and Marauding Mako, mine had a combo win with Lotleth Giant, and a secondary beatdown plan with Hollow One and Chitin Gravestalker. The deck DESPERATELY needs to cut down as much as humanly possible on any card without cycling. I think running Dark Ritual is a mistake, as you can get similar results with 4 copies of Lotus Petal - when churning through your deck, you can combo off so much earlier with you effectively know you can consistently find free bursts of 1 mana to cast Songs of the Damned. The difference between your bursts of mana costing (1) and costing (0) is huge. Running Lotus Petal is extra good when accompanied by a suite of (1) cost cyclers. Drannith Stinger is a good start, but I would run every creature with a (1) mana cycling ability ever printed - it just adds a crazy amount of consistency. I've found that 38 to 40 creatures with cycling in the deck is ideal for a 1 turn combo kill.
Finding lands is extra easy with cards like Troll of Khazad-dum and Oliphaunt. With the amount of cards that cycling lets you see, you really don't want to mulligan. These landcycling cards are huge because they often allow you a turn 1 tutor of a land in the early game (Troll of Khazad-dum gets you Fetid Pools and Oliphaunt gets you Canyon Slough). You can tutor for a land turn one either with an untapped Ash Barrens or the strict upgrade in Capital City that also filters your mana, or again with a turn 1 Lotus Petal. Later in the game, the land cyclers are never dead draws, because they tutor for a dual land, that also ends up cycling away, letting you see more cards and remove more lands from your deck as you combo off.
Crucially for the combo win, Lotleth Giant only cares about creatures in your graveyard, so do keep that in mind when comboing off. I tend to split my graveyard into two piles - 1 with creatures and 1 with noncreature spells (cycled lands, lotus petals, and so on). The combo turn needs to resolve a Songs of the Damned to cast Lotleth Giant usually, but thats not always super hard. A sideboard tech of Miscalculation really helps protect this here. Also 2 Shadow of the Grave is usually enough to stop your deck from running out of steam, especially since you run out of steam after seeing like around 30-40 cards in your deck. Again, Lotus Petal is so useful here.
Finally, I've found that you CAN run 3 fluctuators and not 4 if you're able to have a split of cycling cards with a low enough curve. This deck really wants to minimize the turns it spends not spending mana, so again, Ash Barrens and Capital City not entering tapped is really important, same for your Lotus Petal. These untapped mana sources, along with 1 mana landcyclers and 1 mana cycling creatures gets this deck to be much more consistent and much faster.
Built like this, the Hollow Ones / Chitin Gravestalker Beatdown plan is more of a trick to trip up your opponent rather than a primary win condition. When your opponent plans to counter your big combo turn, dumping 2 4/4s and a 5/4 onto the battlefield really early can be backbreaking. THese are the matchups where something like Drannith Stinger is just a lot less useful as a pinger, and I would think of Marauding Mako and Drannith Stinger as plank cards with cycling rather than win conditions.
This deck has trouble against certain kinds of graveyard hate. It never targets anything in the graveyard, and never looks to play things directly out of your graveyard, so cards like Grafdigger's Cage and Soulless Jailer don't do anything. But cards that exile our whole graveyard or stop cards from getting to the graveyard (Rest in Piece / Leyline of the Void / Soul-Guide Lantern) make the Lolteth gameplan obsolete. Sideboarding in Ominous Seas still turns out cycling card draw into massive beaters, and this can still let us combo into two or three 8/8s to threaten a short clock.
The deck has some potential and honestly is a ton of fun to tinker with. I've been iterating on it for ages myself. Here's my list if you're at all curious (Ignore the silly name and out-of-date descriptions, its a little messy and I started it 5 years ago in high school). Deck: deck-large:cycling-coombo-deck
runester7979 on
5 months ago
Bonehoard, Rogue's Passage, Fireshrieker, Blackblade Reforged, Helm of the Host, Grafdigger's Cage, Relic of Progenitus
Balaam__ on
Heart of Darkness Challenge - Pt. II - Yarok
6 months ago
That should cover most of the usual graveyard hate. Tormod's Crypt, Rest in Peace, Relic of Progenitus and Grafdigger's Cage all fall under that umbrella of removal. You’re going to have to watch out for the subtle graveyard hate, the kind attached to creatures as some sort of activated ability or tertiary effect. Those can fall outside the jurisdiction of simple artifact/enchantment hate.
wallisface on Graveyard Removal Rocks Survey
7 months ago
Each option has it's own strengths and weaknesses which need to be considered - they're each meta dependent, as well as dependent on the kind of deck you yourself are running
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Relic of Progenitus is probably the strongest card here, but can be really unideal if your own deck is wanting to use its graveyard, as Relic removes your own grave as well. Generally I'll generally only consider the other options below when Relic feels too self-damaging. It's also worth noting that Relic requires a mana to perform its mass-exile, so prefers your deck to be able to easily leave mana up.
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Soul-Guide Lantern is imo a generally worse Relic of Progenitus, but can be a better option for protecting your own graveyard. Not requiring a mana for exile will also sometimes help with decks tighter on mana. Its ETB seems interesting but I haven't found it particularly relevant most of the time, particularly as an Urza's Saga fetch target.
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Tormod's Crypt is the bare-bones graveyard hate, as it costs no mana but comes with no benefits. Its probably only worth considering for decks that are extremely tight on mana (aggro), or decks with high artifact-count-relevance (affinity). Generally I think it would be super hard to justify using this as an Urza's Saga fetch.
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Nihil Spellbomb is a stronger Soul-Guide Lantern if your deck has the ability to pay the .
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Ghost Vacuum is interesting but generally wants to only be played in a deck that has decent-odds of making a game go long (if you're unlikely to ever trigger its mana ability, you're better off just using Relic of Progenitus)
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Grafdigger's Cage hits a very specific range of strategies, while doing nothing for other plans, so is super meta reliant.
capwner on Graveyard Removal Rocks Survey
7 months ago
TheOfficialCreator Yes I think Soul-Guide or Tormod's in Emry decks; Relic or Vacuum in other decks. Nihil Spellbomb is also unique in that you don't HAVE to hold up mana for it, but it still can cantrip+exile like Relic, so in a black deck I think Nihil is better. In the current modern meta I think Ghost Vacuum makes the most sense given the 2 most popular decks run Phlage and Oculus, making it both denial and a wincon. Grafdigger's Cage could also be promising if we start seeing a lot more Green Sun's decks.
capwner on Graveyard Removal Rocks Survey
7 months ago
Balaam__ Rest in Peace is the GOAT, sadly not quite playable for us Saga bros however :) Grafdigger's Cage with its continuous effect would be the closest, but unfortunately if cage is removed the graveyard comes right back. The combined etb exile + continuous effect is what makes RIP such amazing GY hate.
TheOfficialCreator I agree Relic is the most classic and popular choice (besides Tormod's, maybe). But it's worth remembering that the first ability is non-targeted (well, targets a player but THEY choose the exiled card), meaning you can't remove specific cards like Ghost Vacuum or Soul-Guide Lantern ETB. But the tap ability is good for attrition if you can play it early. I agree the cantrip ON USE is nice, this is the main reason I don't like Soul-Guide. Disadvantages of relic would be needing to pay to activate it, the symmetrical effect (say you are playing Emry, Lurker of the Loch for example), and also it exiles itself so it's not possible to loop it (again most likely with Emry). I think in decks that don't care about these things, Relic could be the best option though.
capwner on Graveyard Removal Rocks Survey
7 months ago
I'm curious especially for you Modern players, which is the best / your favorite or -drop piece of GRAVEYARD HATE to include in an Urza's Saga package?
To me it seems the contenders are...
Personally I have really been liking Ghost Vacuum for the repeatability, and the 2nd ability's effectiveness against cards like Phlage and Abhorrent Oculus, though it is weaker against decks such as delirium which rely more on a mass of cards in the graveyard vs. specific ones.
Are there any classic graveyard removal rocks I am missing? Which is your favorite and why?
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